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Recently this year the WTO ruled against China's practices in the rare earth market but some pundits have stated that this ruling doesn't matter because China controls the whole supply chain of rare earths. Would you care to comment on the efficacy of the WTO's ruling? Can you explain what part of the supply chain the US is missing? For example, we're missing mines but if we had mines we're missing refineries but if we had them we're missing ... etc. What throughput of each mineral in our domestic supply chain would we need to put the US government at ease?

Since the restrictions from non-participants investing in commodities markets went away, that's what one will get.

Until such restrictions are restored, Goldman-Sachs will continue to make money on the poor's daily bread.

http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/your-daily-bread-is-goldman-sachs-hottest-commodity.05-05.html

William

Yet the median barely budges

1. Official median income is HK$17,2 versus HK$35,000 by our sample data.
2. China Income: Trends in Per Capita Levels: "In 1990, China’s average per capita national income was around $350. Within a decade, there was a threefold increase, taking the figure to $1,000. At the end of 2008, the figure tripled yet again and China’s average per capita national income reached another high of $3,000. If China’s average national income continues to rise at an annual rate of 8%, the country’s per capita income will reach $8,500 by 2020 and will touch the $20,000 mark by 2030. Hence, China’s average per capita income will exceed the current income of Taiwan and Korea and the country will qualify for an OECD membership."
3. China's war on inequality: "Those with less education, however, such as migrant workers and farmers, have fared much worse. The former earn an annual salary (including fringe benefits!) totaling $2,000; the later may earn only half that. They comprise, in roughly equal parts, the low-income workers who account for up to 65-70 percent of the total workforce. Their average income has grown, but more slowly than the 8-10 percent annual GDP growth rate of the past 20 years."
4. China's war on inequality - Comments and suggestions - People Forum: "Thirty years ago, 80% of China’s labor force was composed of farmers. But, while that figure is down now to about 30%, rural education has continued to suffer from inadequate funding and human capital relative to urban, industrializing regions."
5. Why The China Property Bubble Doesn't Exist : "Said differently, that average Chinese couple has twice the real purchasing power their nominal income implies because their relative cost of living (including real estate) is lower. It is estimated that almost half of the average Beijing worker's income is actually purely disposable. When you adjust for this fact and that the Chinese couple can easily divert more income to real estate as they choose, because other expenses are lower, it makes Beijing's real estate relative to income seem much more affordable."

it's not the rich which create demand, it's the poor and middle class.

The rich do create demand, just not as much as the middle class and poor. However the rich create jobs which boosts income for the poor.

I have provided links and data backing up what I said, now can you do the same? As they show the uneducated and rural population has had the lowest rise in income, but that population changed from 80% of the total population to 30%. More and more rural people leave the country er farms and move to cities where they get better paying jobs and more education. If you can prove I'm wrong then my mind can change.

Falcon

Somebody (I'm too lazy to find the link today) calculated that Big Oil is getting hundreds of billions of dollars per year in subsidies; here's a related link http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/spill-highlights-oil-industry-double-game-re-taxes-and-subsidies-06-07.html

I have no qualms with a little of that subsidy being shifted to electric vehicles. If we don't jumpstart the industry, the Chinese certainly will, and it's a damn sight better having production on our shores rather than overseas.

The original article's claim only makes sense if you ignore how economies of scale ramp up and how costs ramp down.

What a fascinatingly oversimplified view you have of China. I guess it escaped your attention that they have the fastests-growing middle class in the world.

Is there something bad about boiling a subject down to it's essence?

Also, please provide a citation for your claim. I tried googling "fastests-growing middle class" and only got two sketchy articles mentioning that China's middle class was growing.. none of them giving any superlative comparisons.

When I do searches related to Chinese income however, I learn that average per capita income has only recently passed the $3k USD watermark, and the Urban-rural income gap is the widest it's been in 30 years.

I re-iterate. China can make more cheap electronic goods because of bargain basement labor costs. There is no magic involved. If people are being paid less for their labor, then they have critically less money with which to buy gadgets.. especially since their need to eat and put a roof over their head is not mitigated.

You get what you pay for, and the Chinese economy pays among the lowest margins in the world to it's staggering population. If their government really believes they can live without the global community or basic Internet Access, then let them buy their own computers with no money and enjoy their national 403 page.

Assuming that each pirated song is worth $80,000 and I can download a 4mb mp3 file every 30 seconds (I can probably download them quicker than this but let's be conservative), this means I can cause $160,000 worth of damage per minute to the music industry. This translates to $9,600,000 per hour, £230,400,000 per day. In a year this adds up to $83,950,000,000. Bear with me here people. Given that according to http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/world-economic-indicators/world-gdp.html the Gross Product of the entire world in 2007 was $65.61 Trillion. It should only take, even if we are extremely optimistic and estimate that this has increased by a total of 10% over the past 2 years, less than 900 of us with dedicated computers to bankrupt the ENTIRE WORLD.

A /.'er and you can't even use google. Quote from an article I pulled up in 15 seconds. http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/usa/ "Literacy rate over the age 15 is 100%"

A /.'er who doesn't check their sources before spouting off. Literacy in Russia is 100% for MALES over the age of 15, and 97% for females over 15.

Troll away, I don't give a $&^@.

A /.'er and you can't even use google. Quote from an article I pulled up in 15 seconds. http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/usa/ "Literacy rate over the age 15 is 100%"